


A Final Favor

by Lampshadez



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 06:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13001775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lampshadez/pseuds/Lampshadez
Summary: Set during Clara's last conversation with the Doctor, in the diner/her TARDIS.  She's got a favor to ask him, something she's wanted since the moment he first took her away in the magic blue box.  It's high time she'd asked him for it.





	A Final Favor

“Do you take requests?” Clara asked.

She was stood there behind the counter.  It was her first time doing this whole diner charade.  Something about the diner setting made her think of the Doctor.  She knew she was going to travel with Ashildr, she knew she had things she wanted to do.  But of all the lists she had in her head, this, that she was doing right now, was at the top of the list.  She wanted to see him one last time.  She wanted to say goodbye to her oldest, closest friend, even if it meant he would be saying goodbye to a stranger.

“What, for songs?” the Doctor asked, looking up from his guitar.  He had a good natured laugh at that.  “Within reason.”

“No, not for a song,” Clara said.  She cleared her throat, brushed her hair behind her ears.  She was nervous.  “Look, I know who you are.”

“Do you?” the Doctor asked, still light hearted.  “I’m not sure I do.”

“I know.”

The Doctor sat up a bit straighter at that.

“Do you?” the Doctor asked, something more sinister in his tone this time.

Clara nodded.  The tone didn’t faze her.  She’d heard it before.  She’d even had it directed at her before.

“I know who you are, I know what you do.  I know you try to be a good man, and I really think that you are.”

“You don’t really know me.”

“I do,” Clara said.  “And you can’t ask how I do.  And you can’t try to find out.”

The Doctor, still defensive, was starting to look intrigued.  Clara wasn’t sure how to phrase this; she really did not want him to go looking for her.  She didn’t want him to try.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.  “A stranger in a diner says she knows me but I don’t know her-.”

“A stranger in a diner trusts you,” Clara cut him off.  “And she’s asking for a favor.”

The Doctor softened.  Trust wasn’t something he took lightly.

“I know who you are,” Clara repeated.  “I know what you do.  And, don’t ask me how I know this but I promise you it’s true, you owe me a favor.”

The Doctor laughed.  “I owe you a favor?”

Clara nodded.  She didn’t elaborate, she didn’t explain, but she nodded with such certainty and finality that the Doctor was inclined to believe her.

“So, what’s this request?”

“There’s a woman,” Clara said.  “Her name is Ellie Ravenwood.  She lives in Blackpool, in England, she was growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s.  Promise me you’ll take her somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Clara replied quickly.  “I don’t know.  Anywhere you want.  She wanted to see the world and all the days she should’ve lived got taken from her.  You’re the only person in the universe who can give them back.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“That’s not a real answer-.”

“It’s the one you have,” Clara snapped, scared that she couldn’t convince him without revealing too much.  “Please,” she tried again, after settling down a bit.  “She would love travelling with you.  Please, just go, at least ask her.  If she says no, fine, thanks for trying.  But, please.  Go see her.”

“Why are you asking?” the Doctor asked.  “Why ask for a favor for her and not you?”

“Because I’m dying,” Clara said simply, and it didn’t unnerve her anymore that it felt so easy to say.  “Because I am dead and I have one friend left in the universe and she is kind of the reason I’m dead.”

“Kind of?”

“It’s complicated,” Clara said.  “Please, though.  You show people wonders and if everyone ever deserved that, it was Ellie Ravenwood.”

“Okay,” the Doctor agreed.  “I look forward to meeting her.”

“One more thing,” Clara said.  “You can’t go to her future.  Meet her in the 70’s and that’s it.”

“There are an awful lot of stipulations on this favor, do you know that?”

Clara gave him a look.

“Fine,” the Doctor said.  “Agreed.  Only because this is my favorite diner.”

Clara scoffed at that.

“This isn’t a real diner, is it?”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Clara asked, dodging the question.

“In Utah,” the Doctor said.  “But we’re not in Utah…”

“We can be.”

The Doctor gave her a look.  Something about this woman behind the counter made him want to trust her implicitly, more than he’s trusted anyone in a while.  He believed her when she said he owed her a favor, and not just because he knew he probably owed lots of people favors.  He didn’t know who this woman was, he was starting to come around to the idea that he never would, but he knew she did something great for him and he maybe never repaid her.

“Come on, then, what do I owe you this favor for?” the Doctor asked after a pause.  He was looking at her, taking it all in.  He couldn’t remember a thing about her, and he knew that with a lack of memory that complete, it was probably for a significant reason, if not a good one.

Clara held his gaze, smirking.  “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

She couldn’t believe it sometimes, when she thought about it. All the adventures she had with the Doctor, it was hard to really accept that they all really happened.  She knew what she’d done, she knew all the places she’d gone, she would never forget them.  She knew that she’d saved his life, that she’d saved countless others, that she’d lost things she’d never get back.

“I get that a lot.”

Clara laughed, pulling back to wipe down the counter in front of her.

“I won’t see you again, will I?”

“You might,” Clara said.  “But I won’t see you.”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, feeling the slight pang in his hearts whenever he heard something like that.  He heard that too often.  “For whatever happened to you.”

Clara looked up and held his gaze at that.  He was her friend, her oldest and closest, but that didn’t mean he was always a very good friend.  Flashes of their time together ran through her mind – the times he hid who she was from her, the times he lied, the time he left her on the damn moon with a nuclear bomb and a teenager, the time he let Missy go.  The time that, though they tried so hard, they couldn't really get Danny back.

“Are you?”

The Doctor could hear the curiosity and the bit of hopefulness in her voice.  He had heard the tone before, from other people, but was possibly just then recognizing it for what it was.

“What did I do to you?”

Clara held his gaze for just a second longer, then pulled back.  “Nothing awful,” she said.  “Promise.  We’ve just been through a lot.”

“But that’s done now?”

Clara nodded and went back to wiping down the counter.  “Yeah.  That’s done now.”

There was a silence between them and it was only a little uncomfortable.

“Listen,” Clara said.  “When you go see her, when you go see Ellie, be honest with her.  I know there are things you can’t tell the people you travel with, but trust her.  She can be trusted, she’s the best person I’ve ever known.  Be good to her.”

“I’ll certainly try,” the Doctor said after a moment.

Clara nodded.  “I do know you, and you are a someone who tries really hard to be good.  If I didn’t think you were good, I wouldn’t ask you to take her.”

The Doctor nodded.

“Thank you,” Clara said.  She went back to wiping down the counter, but she wasn’t engaged in it.  She felt like she needed to say more, but she wasn’t sure how.

So, there was a brief silence.  He fidgeted with the strings of his guitar, but he didn’t seem like his heart was in it, either.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said.

“For asking a favor?” the Doctor asked.  “Don’t be.  I’m happy to help.”

“No, not for the favor.”

She looked up and held his gaze.  She knew she couldn’t say more, mostly because she knew she couldn’t reveal too much about her but also because her stubborn streak always tended to stand in the way of her outright admitting she had been wrong about something.

“Yeah?”

She nodded.  “Yeah.”  She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make a list of what is for, but she felt it.  Essentially sentencing them both to death in order to force him to save Danny, only to have their two lives saved by his forethought with a dream patch was probably on top of the list.  Getting herself killed eventually anyway was likely up there, too.  It was probably also for the situation, for the fact that they could never see each other again.  They could never have a goodbye that would be satisfactory.  That she maybe still resented things she’d never confronted him about.  That there were a lot of feelings between them that never really got addressed.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> It always sort of bothered me that season 7 set up stuff with Clara's mother, then that storyline largely got dropped. So, I just wrote this little thing to kind of address that.
> 
> Also, I think there's a lot of unresolved things between Clara and the Doctor, both good and bad things. I think they both have things they should probably apologize for, and they both probably have grudges of some size or resentments or something that they never got a chance to talk about. I'm also not sure they ever really talked about how much they meant to each other - which is open to interpretation. (I purposefully didn't mark this as Whouffle bc while it can be read that way, it also can pretty easily be read as them just being close friends. So, I hope y'all see what you want to see.) Anyway I like the challenge the setting of this story presents by kind of letting them sort of address all that without really talking it through, because by this point it's too late for that. I think there's a kind of tragic irony to them having so much that's unresolved, and them, being time travelers, running out of time to do it. I think the episode handled it really well, though, and I just kind of wanted to throw this in again to address the storyline about Ellie.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!


End file.
